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Rama's Roundup - Summer 2018

It has been great to be able to continue to meet Scouts, Explorers and Leaders over the last few months with visits to Troops in Ipswich and supporting a small group of Explorers to organise a two day Passport Expedition. Thank you to the Scout Leaders from Wolsey for welcoming me to their District Meeting in March and especially to Deben District for inviting me to attend your St Georges Day Parade.

I was also privileged to visit Rendlesham Scouts at Hallowtree to present their first Gold Chief Scouts Award (with more scouts almost there).

Congratulations to Mel Buck and his team for organising a superb Reunion Camp for Lowestoft district with a huge variety of traditional scouting skills and fun activities. They even managed to get the County Commissioner balanced on a rope bridge although I maintain that all my air-rifle pellets passed through exactly the same hole on the target!

The Summer is here and it is fantastic to see so many young people out camping, having fun and developing new skills for life. A huge thank you to Jo Saagi and her team for organising a fabulous Wet Weekend at Ramsholt. It was a lovely to see so many young people out on the water. Jo did mention that there are some rafting barrels going spare if anyone is looking for some.

Off this weekend to Gilwell 24 and hoping to see lots of Suffolk Explorers there.

I have also held a meeting of District Commissioners, District Explorer Commissioners and District Explorer administrators where we were able to start exploring some of the challenges in Scouting and possible solutions. It has been identified that we lose a significant number of Scouts when they turn 14 and we will be focussing on how to retain these young people and feed them into Explorer units to enable them to access all that is on offer.

Adult recruitment has also been discussed and it is critical that we continue to support, resource and train out Young Leaders but also identify and recruit new adults into Scouting. In a number of areas, it is the Explorer units where this is most obvious. We are continuing with our project to explore Young Leader Training provision across the County (especially with recent changes to the training) to ensure consistency but also to allow Young Leaders to access the training they need in other Districts where appropriate. Thank you to Paddy for his continued support in this. We are hoping to contact those who have been identified as Young Leader Trainers in the near future.

I am delighted to announce that we have successfully run a training event for Duke of Edinburgh Expedition Assessors with 12 new assessors at all three levels for expeditions on Foot, Cycle and Water. Once they have completed a supported assessment they will be ready to go live so please make sure that you continue to notify your expeditions in good time. Thank you to our existing assessors for their ongoing efforts and for helping the new assessors to qualify. We are now starting to plan an Expedition Supervisory Training Day for all those involved in DofE expeditions, as we are in the heart of the expedition season, this will probably be in the Autumn. Good luck to all those planning their expeditions now and congratulations to all those who have completed them.

We are also ready to launch our first Bronze Bell-Boat Expedition and are well advanced on filling the first boat. That said there are two boats available so if any explorers are interested in undertaking a Bronze Bell-Boat Expedition this season, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . The training will cover expedition and camp skills, water safety and paddling skills for Bell-Boats, a Training Expedition, Bell-Boat Permit assessment and Qualifying Expedition toward the end of the expedition season.

Good luck to the Scouts from Sudbury as they prepare for their Netherlands expedition, I look forward to visiting to hear all about it.

We are also exploring the opportunities for County Camps in 2019 and an Explorer conference. All suggestions and offers of help greatly appreciated.

Please don’t forget to let me know if you would like me to visit a troop, unit or event. I can’t promise but in Scouting spirit will do my best to get there but can only do this if I know it is happening. Following a brilliant camp with the Cubs, Scouts and Leaders travelling to Rotterdam in August, I suspect “the teapot” may be visiting Lowestoft for a future campfire.

Have a lovely summer of fun and adventure. I know all those visiting Norjam will have a fantastic camp